Firenze, Galleria degli Uffizi: The Birth of Venus. It is a painting by Sandro Botticelli generally thought to have been painted in the mid 1480s.Depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore of Cyprus. The seashell she stands on was a symbol in classical antiquity for a woman's vulva. Thought to be based in part on the Venus de' Medici, an ancient Greek marble sculpture of Aphrodite.